Vehicles and trucks of various kinds are widely available for transporting goods. It is known to load trucks by mounting a large intermodal shipping container on a truck. Shipping containers of this type can be transferred from one form of transportation to another without unloading or handling the goods contained therein. Thus a shipping container may be initially loaded, then placed on a truck, transferred to a railroad car, set on a ship, removed to another railroad car, and finally carried by another truck to a final destination, all without handling the goods loaded in the shipping container. Trucks for carrying intermodal shipping containers in this manner are generally quite tall and, consequently, unstable. It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a means for attaching a container to a vehicle that presents a relatively low, wide and stable configuration.
Further, cranes or other apparatus have usually been necessary for transferring the containers from one form of transport to another. Such a container could not be easily unloaded from a truck, stored, and reloaded on the truck without additional lifting apparatus. It is a further object of the present invention to provide a vehicle with the means to pick up and set down a large shipping container without auxiliary mechanisms.
One form of vehicle for moving containers has a U-frame with rearwardly extending side frames or beams. Such vehicles are shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,556,356 to Niva and U.S. Pat. No. 5,879,122 to Voetzke. As explained by Niva, such trucks are driven backward to a container standing on the ground. The open end of the U-frame is moved backwards such that the U-frame will enclose the container on three sides. As mentioned in Niva and as described in Voetzke, a second inner U-frame is then lifted hydraulically to contact the container and lift it into a tort position. Niva seeks to eliminate the second inner lifting frame by providing specialized coupling for connecting hydraulic cylinders on the vehicle directly to specialized brackets on the container. Nevertheless, it is still difficult to provide a method of attachment that can be easily driven around a relatively long container. In both Niva and Voetzke, for example, the containers shown are relatively more narrow near the ground and have a widened top to engage an inner U-frame or special hydraulic lifts while providing clearance near the ground for the first U-flame of the vehicles. Such a shape for the container is suitable for the refuse containers described in Voetzke or the mining containers described by Niva Standardized shipping containers, by contrast, need a rectangular shape so that they can be stacked in ships, for example. It is an object of the present invention, therefore, to provide a U-frame vehicle with the capability to move containers with improved facility for placing the vehicle around a substantially rectangular shipping container and attaching the container to the vehicle.